‘How’s your mama and sisters?’ he enquired, leaning negligently against the doorjamb.
She frowned. ‘How do you always know when I receive a letter from them?’
‘It’s easy. There’s one almost every day. Your family are wonderful letter writers.’
She looked sad. ‘I miss them. I wish they would come here but they absolutely refuse to travel.’
He walked across the thick carpet and sat on the bed, displacing one of the pugs that growled slightly at him.
‘What do you call that animal? You haven’t named it after Norris, have you?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘Of course not. It’s called Oberon. Why do you think I’ve called it Norris?’
‘Because it’s almost as jealous of me as he is. It’s very hard being married to you. All males – even pug dogs – loathe me because of it. They’re all in love with you.’
She tossed her head and laughed sweetly, her melancholy gone. In a strange way his unfailing ability to lighten her mood annoyed him. He wished she was more difficult to manipulate, that her moods ran deeper and she was more inscrutable, but at least she was still very, very lovely.
Leaning on one hand he looked at her with pleasure. Bethya had luxuriant dark hair that was glossy as a raven’s wing and her skin was satiny-looking and creamy-white like the petals of a magnolia. It was her eyes that enchanted him most, however, for they were aquamarine, slightly slanting, set wide apart above prominent cheekbones, and the eyelashes were incredibly thick and so dark that it looked as if she had drawn lines of kohl around her eyes in the manner of an Indian temple dancing girl.
He often wondered what story lay behind her mixed parentage… Had one of her male forebears gone to India as a soldier and met a dancing girl? Her parents had told her some romantic tale about an Indian princess and an English officer who snatched her off her husband’s funeral pyre, a pleasant yarn that Sydney pretended to believe when Bethya told it to him, but he had noticed that, now their own children were growing up, she talked less of her mixed ancestry. As far as the children were concerned, their mother was a pure-bred Englishwoman. It was only when she was excited that a shrill, bazaar woman’s note appeared in her voice, making Sydney raise his eyebrows and smile. When he did that she was always very angry.
‘Norris tells me that Tim and Emma Jane Maquire are coming today. I’d almost forgotten,’ he told her.
She frowned. ‘I’m surprised you forgot that. They’re your old friends.’
He stood up. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be in attendance. I’m looking forward to it. But you don’t mind them, do you? I thought you’d be pleased they’re coming, especially now that Tim’s been given a knighthood.’
He always teased Bethya about being a snob and said she preferred titles to sainthood. Today she did not rise to the bait but returned to her letter with an abstracted air.
‘I like them well enough… but she’s such an unusual little woman, interested in building bridges and digging tunnels… so odd…’ she said.
When she saw that he was on the verge of leaving, she added, ‘Don’t sulk. I will talk to you but first I want to finish this letter from Miriam… She always writes such screamingly funny letters.’
His hand was on the door. ‘I don’t know why you don’t sail out to see them all in Bombay if they won’t come here,’ he told her.
‘I can’t go just now.’ Her voice was so unusually solemn that he stopped and stared at her.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m expecting another baby,’ she said quietly.
He groaned. ‘Oh God, not another one.’ They already had two sons and three daughters and as far as Sydney was concerned, that was enough. The succession to his title and property was assured and the nursery was full.
She frowned over the glasses which were in place again. ‘For a man as sophisticated as you, it never ceases to amaze me why you don’t associate one of your favourite activities with the size of our nursery.’
He laughed. At least pregnancy had not made her incapable of being biting when she chose.
He went to Hyde Park, which was looking exceptionally fine because the trees were in full leaf and the beds full of brilliantly coloured flowers. Fashionably dressed people were strolling along the paths, women in fluttering dresses and beribboned hats on the arms of more soberly dressed men. Little platoons of black-caped nannies ushered their charges along, some of the children trying to escape from supervision by running very fast behind gleaming metal hoops.
At Rotten Row the riders were out, parading themselves and their horses beneath the tall trees that lined the bridleway. Sydney scorned such an exhibitionist activity for himself – he was a serious hunting man – but he enjoyed watching the horses and admiring the skill of some of the riders, especially the women, many of whom were high-class tarts who used Rotten Row as a place to display their charms to their clientele. Bethya was a fine horsewoman but he would never have allowed her to ride in Rotten Row among the courtesans.
He strolled along, swinging his cane, with his hat rakishly tilted over the droop-lidded eyes, eyes whose sarcastic gleam had won him enemies. He was burning with a strange unease that made him want to throw up his comfortable and luxurious life and take off into the unknown. But he could not leave. He’d gone once before, and could not repeat the trick. Perhaps, he thought, when I have a chat with Maquire, this feeling of unsettledness will go. His old friend, whom he’d met when he was on the run the first time, always had a good effect on him.
It was near noon when he turned to go back home. Then he saw the girl.
She was mounted on a showy chestnut horse that he could tell looked more reliable than it actually was. Her tight-fitting habit was dark green and a thick braid of cream-coloured hair fell down her back like the hair of a schoolgirl who had not yet been ‘brought out’. It was incredibly exciting to see this childlike braid of hair on a woman who was unashamedly advertising herself as sexually available.
For that was what she was. There was no mistaking her for a lady in spite of the expensiveness of her clothing. No lady cast her eye over the watching men with such open speculation.
She managed her horse well, making it prance and rear, curvet and bend into the bit like the horses on old Roman carvings. Because of its antics, other, more timid, riders gave her a wide berth, so she rode alone as if she were in a circle of light. That was obviously the way she wanted it.
Sydney leaned his arms on the top rail of the fence dividing the pedestrians from the riders and watched her. She shot him a stare from beneath her hat rim and raised her chin. He turned to ask an acquaintance who was also looking at the girl, ‘Who’s that?’
‘Don’t you know her? That’s Lucy Beresford. At least that’s what she calls herself now. She started off plain Minnie Clough, but she’s gone up in the world since Allandale took her over from his uncle, old Maclean.’
Sydney laughed. ‘She’s Dickie’s doxy, is she? She rides a horse very well.’ The Duke of Allandale was an old friend ofhis, met first at school and later in the Scottish Borders, where Allandale had his lands, during the time when Sydney was in the navvy gang building a railway there.
The man by his side knew all about Lucy. ‘So she should ride well. Her father was head groom in a racing stable. She knows what she’s about.’
‘In more ways than one I’ll be bound,’ rejoined Sydney, still laughing. It amused him that the Duke of Allandale, who masqueraded as a woman-shy bachelor under the thumb of a domineering mother, should be associating with such a girl.
‘They say she costs him a pretty penny,’ Sydney’s informant was hissing in his ear.
He turned and grinned as he said, ‘My dear chap, it’s wrong to count the cost of some things in life. There can’t be many like her in town. Allandale’s quite right to run that filly for as long as he can.’
* * *
‘Wha-hay!’ With a huge yell that rattled the Dresden vases on the drawing-room mantelpiece, Tim Maquire advanced
on Sydney. His arms were spread wide and, the two men were soon clasped in an affectionate embrace, clapping each other on the back and laughing aloud in their pleasure at meeting again.
The women looked on this exuberance with slightly embarrassed smiles and both wondered silently at the strangeness of men. Tim and Sydney seemed like little boys, so pleased were they to be in each other’s company.
‘By God I’m glad to see you, Black Ace. You’re looking well,’ cried Sydney, stepping back from his friend.
Tim, dandified as ever in a pale pearl-grey suit of foreign cut and a purple silk cravat, ran a hand down his black beard and said, ‘I am well. France suits me. I like the food and the wine – and so does Emma Jane.’
He put out a hand to his little wife, the girl he’d fallen in love with and married when she was finishing the bridge-building contract of her dead father at Camptounfoot. She was dressed in a gown of cherry-and-grey-striped taffeta and a perky little hat which gave her a cosmopolitan air as well.
Her voice was sweet as she said, ‘We’re so pleased to see you again, Sydney. Tim hardly slept last night thinking about this meeting… and we’re pleased to see you too, Bethya,’ she turned quickly to her hostess who was standing apart from the other three. Sensitive Emma Jane guessed that Sydney’s wife might feel left out of this reunion because the three of them were friends before Bethya and Sydney eloped and married.
Their host poured Madeira into delicate glasses and handed the first one to Emma Jane. She does look well, he thought, for Emma Jane was sleeker and plumper than he remembered and the radiance that shone from her seemed to light up the whole room.
‘Here’s to you, Lady Maquire,’ he said, raising his own glass to his lips after he’d served the others. ‘How does it feel to have a title?’
She giggled. ‘You should know. I wish my mother could have been alive to hear about it. It would have helped her reconcile herself to the idea that I married a navvy! I’m most pleased for Tim’s sake, though. It means that people recognise the work he’s done. It’s thanks to you too. If you hadn’t backed us, we’d never have managed to take on the big commissions.’
With the help of financial investment from Sydney, she and Tim had started up their own building company after the first bridge was finished and they had been hugely successful.
‘And it’s thanks to him for more than that,’ said Tim. ‘I suspect he’s behind the granting of this title. I’m right, aren’t I, Sydney? You pulled strings, didn’t you?’
Their host threw back the contents of his glass and poured another before replying, ‘My dear chap, what’s the use of sitting in the House of Lords if you can’t do something to help your old friends? Anyway you deserve it. You’ve done more work abroad than any other contractor. You’re very good for the name and reputation of Great Britain. As for investing in you, for once I knew what I was doing. You’ve repaid me very well. My money’s increased ten times over. I hope you’re going to stay at Bella Vista with Bethya and me when you go north. I invited you, didn’t I?’
‘Yes you did. Next week we’re going to Camptounfoot to see Tibbie. We’ve not been there for several years and she’s getting old. Emma Jane’s worried in case she’s doing too much,’ said Tim. Emma Jane had been Tibbie’s lodger while she was finishing the bridge and they had grown very fond of each other. Tibbie had been genuinely delighted when her daughter’s widower married her lodger a year after Hannah’s death.
‘Did you know that old Colonel Anstruther died and left Bella Vista to Bethya?’ asked Sydney.
‘That was good of him,’ said Tim. Bethya had been married to Colonel Anstruther’s son before she ran off with Sydney.
‘He was a very nice man, very fair,’ chipped in Emma Jane who had a soft spot for the old colonel, who had been her only supporter on the railway company’s board when she insisted on finishing the bridge at Camptounfoot after her father died. If she hadn’t, she and her mother would have been bankrupted by the other unscrupulous railway directors.
‘He has indeed. Not only did he leave her the house but he left her his fortune as well – half a million in hard cash!’ said Sydney with a laugh. ‘My dear wife’s a very rich woman, I’m happy to say. The only drawback is that people might think I married her for her money.’
Perhaps Sydney resents his wife’s fortune although he’s not a poor man himself, thought Tim.
Emma Jane rapidly changed the subject. ‘But have you heard our greatest piece of news? We’ve got a baby. We’ll bring him and his nurse with us to Bella Vista,’ she said with a brilliant smile.
Sydney put down his glass and took her hands in his. He was well aware that for the first years of their marriage, Emma Jane’s failure to conceive had been a great sorrow to them.
‘A baby! That’s better than a title! When was he born? What’s his name!’ he cried in unfeigned delight.
Tim answered proudly, ‘His name is Christopher, after Emma Jane’s father and he’s eight months old.’
Their eyes met over Emma Jane’s head and both were remembering the day that they watched Kate, Tim’s infant daughter by his first wife Hannah, die of cholera in Dr Robertson’s arms. Sydney was glad that the new child was not another little girl who might waken sad memories for her father.
Emma Jane turned her happy face to her hostess and asked, ‘And how are your children? When we went away to France you had three. How are they?’
‘Multiplying fast,’ Sydney told her. ‘We’ve increased their number by another two and there’s a sixth on the way. I’ll soon be knee-deep in children if my wife doesn’t exercise a little restraint.’
Bethya snorted, ‘Me! It’s you who needs to exercise restraint!’ To Emma Jane she added, ‘After luncheon the nursemaid will bring the children down and you’ll be able to see them.’
Emma Jane took her hostess’s hand. ‘You are lucky. They must be a great delight to you.’
Bethya beamed, for she was a doting mother too. ‘They are. I like large families. I’ve got five sisters and we’re all great friends.’
Emma Jane said sadly, ‘I had only one brother and he was killed in an accident when he was twenty-four, but I’m still friendly with his wife Amelia. She’s like a sister to me, though I don’t see her often.’
Lunch was delicious and after the meal, the children were brought down from the nursery – a baby in the nurse’s arms, two solemn-faced small boys with Sydney’s blond hair and two delightful, dark-haired girls. They were all exquisitely well mannered, even the baby seemed smiling and polite.
When Tim and Emma Jane were walking back to the house in Half Moon Street which they’d taken for the duration of their stay in London, they talked over their impressions of the visit and she said reflectively, ‘Didn’t you think there was something strange about Sydney today?’
‘There’s always been something strange about him,’ said Tim, looking fondly down at her.
‘And you’ve always had a soft spot for him,’ she riposted and her husband nodded. ‘I suppose I have. He makes me laugh. I like him.’
She agreed. ‘I like him too. He pretends to be hard and unfeeling but, of course, he isn’t. There are so many levels to him, you’re never sure that what he’s saying is what he really thinks.’
Tim’s face was sombre. ‘Sometimes he doesn’t know what he thinks himself… he acts on impulse.’
‘I think he married on an impulse too,’ said Emma Jane. ‘I wonder if it’s lasted. I hope it has. She obviously adores him. You don’t think they’re unhappy, do you?’
Tim shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think that. But Sydney’s a strange fellow. There’s a kind of madness in him that breaks out every now and again.’
Emma Jane sighed. ‘Well I hope he keeps it under control now. If he says anything about it to you, Tim, tell him he’s lucky to have a wife like Bethya and all those lovely children! When the nanny brought them down I could hardly believe my eyes, each one was more lovely than the one before it.’
* * *
Before the Maquires started their journey to Camptounfoot, Sydney visited them at Half Moon Street. They were living in a cream-painted, flat-fronted building with flower-filled wrought-iron balconies fringing the windows of the first floor, and when the maid admitted him, he found Tim and Emma Jane sitting facing each other across an immense desk. This was how they always worked, both intent on the task in hand but conscious of the other all the time.
When their caller was shown in, the floor was covered with large sheets of paper and the scene reminded Sydney of the days at Camptounfoot when he’d watched Emma Jane poring over plans of the bridge in her wooden hut by the river.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, sitting down and swinging his cane between his legs.
She smiled at him. ‘It’s a new contract for a bridge in America, near New York. We’ve a good chance of securing it. It’s not unlike the one we did at Camptounfoot…’
Reaching down, she lifted up a sheet of paper, spreading it out on the carpet before Sydney and eagerly pointed. ‘See, it’s got twenty piers, not so high as our other one but just as difficult to build.’
He leaned forward and scrutinised the drawings which were meticulous and detailed, for she was the painstaking one of the partnership. Tim did the managing of the men and the building work; she did the planning and was as good at it as any man.
‘It looks wonderful,’ he told her and she beamed, her bright golden eyes sparkling as she said, ‘Yes, I think so too, but nothing will ever look as good to me as the bridge at Camptounfoot. We’re not counting our chickens on this one because we’ve got to win the contract first. We’re up against the best of our competitors… And this’ll amuse you, Sydney – do you know who one of them is?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ he drawled.
Emma Jane laughed. ‘You know him! It’s Robbie Rutherford from Camptounfoot! You remember young Robbie who broke his leg on the bridge site? Dr Robertson said he’d never walk again but he didn’t reckon for Robbie’s determination. He’s now one of the most important men with our biggest rival and rising fast. He took a good project off us last year in Germany. Tim was furious.’
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